Robert99

Shutter, In 1971 I think the Victor Airways were 5 STATUTE MILES on each side of the airway centerline, which was determined by a radial from each VOR station that was a part of the airway. In the present day it is 4 NAUTICAL MILES (or 4.6 STATUTE MILES) on each side of the airway centerline with some additional widths, based on degrees from the VOR stations, when the stations are more than about 100 NAUTICAL MILES apart. Robert99

Jo, What bridge are you talking about, what were the dates of the flood, and what were the dates that you were there? Robert99

Well, Robert why don't you be MORE specific with your use of torqued. If the money was placed in a hole on the beach beneath or under a shed - just how would one propose the hole be dug if the perpetrator carried NO instrument with which to dig - other than his own gloved hands. If one is placing something on a beach how would you propose a person do this. Assuming a person did do this. If one reachs down and digs a hole in the sand - they used their fingertip or gloved hand. The bottom of the hole will be more narrow than the top. If your reference to Torgue is twisted - THINK! The first roll would be bent to fit down in the hole and the other packets would lie flat. Jo, The money was reportedly found in a flat position with only one layer. If some of the money was buried in a more or less vertical position, then that would have been evident to who pulled it out of the ground, rather than just brushed the sand off of it. And that rules out your suggestion. My use of the term "torque" is correctly stated but the term "rotation" may make more sense to you. Basically, the bills shown in the referenced sections of Tom Kaye's web page indicate that one end of the packet of bills stayed close to its original position while the other end of the packet spread out. This is somewhat like what you do when you are holding a hand of cards (poker, bridge, etc.). If you can't view Tom Kaye's page on your computer, then go to your local public library and plug in the web page address on one of their public computers. Despite all your claims, you have access to just about everything, if not everything, on the Internet. So no more excuses about your computer equipment please. Robert99

They didn't quite make it but other packets of the bills, and Cooper himself, may have made it into the Columbia. If they did, their remains may have made a few circuits of the Pacific by now. Robert99

The SR 71 docs were one of many amazing finds by Snowmman. I wish Quade would lift the ban. Snowmman probably already had all the NSA documents that Snowden thought he was releasing for the first time. The designers of server processor chips have incredible opportunities for mischief. 377 Quade, I want to second 377's request for lifting the ban on Snowmman. Don't be like one of the current posters whose candidate for D.B. Cooper is a fellow who stiffed him out of $5 rent more than 50 years ago. That poster remembers ever single "slight" and there is no forgiveness as far as he is concerned. Quade, you are bigger than that poster. Robert99

Blevins, the rotation of the bills IS significant. And the lack of evidence of "fanning", as opposed to "torqueing", means that they were never exposed to deep water as an unrestrained (except for one rubber band) packet. The logical interpretation is that the money packets had never been in the Columbia River proper in the first place. Further, it is really a stretch to suggest that the bills were rotated to such an extent during their handling in Seattle. I suggest that you pay more attention to what Tom Kaye is saying on his web page. I realize that the above may not fit into whatever theories Blevins is advancing in his new book, but life can be a bitch at times. Robert99

I don't suppose anyone wonders whether all the bills in each packet were assembled in perfect, face-up order? Perhaps a few were upside down the whole time within some of the ransom packets? Although the money had been previously 'set aside' by the bank, no one said the money was stored pre-packed in bundles of roughly a hundred bills each and bound with rubber bands. The bills were probably wrapped originally with the standard paper bands, but during assembly of the packets, it was done rather hastily I would assume. It's very possible some ended up facing this way, others the opposite way, during the assembly process and the adding of the rubber bands. It's known that during the assembly process they tried to fool the hijacker into believing the money wasn't being marked or recorded by varying the size of the bundles. I doubt anyone involved in preparing the bundles for delivery cared which way the individual bills faced. The main goal would be to put them together as quickly as possible and get them to the airport before the hijacker decides to blow up the jet. Blevins, Go to Tom Kaye's web page and read his analysis about the money. What you have written above doesn't make sense to me but it does indicate you didn't understand what I was saying in the original post. Robert99

I have my memory and my word - that is NOT proof, but Duane went down the River at Tena's bar and he took something with him and then he threw a bad out at the Red Lion. He also took something down to the river across from the PDX and just West of the PDX. Duane was a litter bug I guess - maybe he was burying candy wrappers! You know Robt YOU make judgementa you should never MAKE - WHAT if I have already PUT Weber on the damn PLANE! YOU have NO idea what I sent to the FBI - none of you have seen the items and you probably never will. A positive ID after 42 yrs will be difficult unless it is something so unforgettable the witness remembers it when placed in front of her. Jo, Duane was never on that plane! Even all your black magic and incantations can't put him on that plane. And the reason he was never on that plane is because he was not D.B. Cooper then or now. Robert99

You do realize that what is stated above supports the fact that the money was buried on the beach. I have stated before that that money was NOT put on that beach until Sept of 1979! Jo, Nothing I have written above supports your idea that the money at Tina Bar was buried by a human. And you have no proof of any kind as to the exact dates the money arrived at the location where it was found. But it is a given that neither Duane Weber nor KC had anything to do with it. Robert99

Quote Torqueing ? Has Tom revised his website/analysis? Guess I will have to find out for myself. This is news to me. Any photos of torque? Measurements? Georger, Take a look in the "Money Find" section, "Money Analysis" subsection, of Tom Kaye's web page. As of February 22, 2013, on his web page, Tom had a Figure 7 in the "Money Analysis" subsection that illustrates the positions of some of the bills while buried. He shows from the fragments that remain of some of the bills that the top bills had rotated counter-clockwise with respect to the bills on the bottom of the packet. I described this movement as being the result of having a counter-clockwise "torque" applied to the packet. The physical force required to produce this torque is water running down the bank and into the Columbia River. I suggest that you read the entire "Money Find" section and "Money Analysis" subsections again. The above was discussed, or at least I wrote about it, on this thread several weeks ago. Robert99

Oh, no. Of course not. Nothing at all. You told me to read the thread for the answers to this question or that. Maybe you should read a report that was the result of a few years of work, much fact checking, and many interviews. You have continually tried to make adjustments to the flight path to explain the money found at Tena Bar. But the idea that 305 was somehow west of the Interstate 5 freeway any distance north of Portland is against the current evidence and totally unproven. If the flight HAD been west of the freeway, the FBI would have looked there. Instead, they concentrated their search miles EAST of the freeway. And if the money went into the river or fell from the sky, explain how three packets of the ransom somehow ended up in the exact same spot miles from the dropzone with nothing else found. When I brought this question to retired FBI agent Fuhrman, he wondered about it too. One random packet that floats down and lands somewhere, maybe. MOST of the money, even more believable. Three together, very difficult to explain. And if you discount dredging, that leaves possible human intervention. I know Tom Kaye was thinking the same thing, he said so in Skyjack. Even if you say Cooper went into the Columbia near Portland or something, and the money bag floated down the river, etc it is still tough to explain how three packets stayed together for miles of river travel long enough to set up housekeeping in the same spot. In the lack of any real, provable evidence regarding how the money ended up at Tena Bar, this is my best guess: Either it was a plant, or someone tossed three bundles of the cash into the river inside some type of container. A bag perhaps. When? Probably after the John Doe warrant was obtained in 1976, when the hijacker discovered he wasn't going to benefit from the Statute of Limitations after all. You have to THINK like the hijacker! You can't just toss the money onto the ground anywhere. If it were found, this would tell the FBI you LIVED, since they would find no other evidence nearby, like your body, or the parachutes, or anything else. So that won't work. The water was the only way, IF it was done for the reason I stated above. Blevins, I have read the above post several times and don't see a single thing to support your claim of KC being a viable Cooper candidate. You cannot treat OPINIONS as FACTS. On the matter of the money coming down the Columbia River, all evidence is that it didn't. Tom Kaye's experiments showed that the ends of a packet of bills, held together with a single rubber band, flared when the packet is placed in the water. The second thing the packet does is sink to the bottom and it stays there. The people familiar with the dredging operations in the Tina Bar area seem to all be of the opinion that the dredging pumps would shred the packets of money. The evidence reported by Tom Kaye is that at least one packet of the money found at Tina Bar had been exposed to a "torque" while on the river bank. This torqueing, plus the height above sea level (and river level) at which the money was found, suggests that the money was in the process of ENTERING the Columbia River. In plain English, the Tina Bar money had never been in the Columbia itself in the first place. Of course, the money was exposed to plenty of rain while on the banks of the Columbia and that water running INTO the Columbia is what moved the money to the location where it was found. As I have pointed out any number of times on this thread, the NW Lower River Road is built on top of a levee. This levee effectively eliminates the possibility of the money coming from the east side of that road. The money did not come from the river. That leaves a very small area between the road and the river where the money could have started its trek INTO the river. Forgive me Shutter, but I am saying that the airliner overflew, or passed less than about 1000 feet west of, Tina Bar. And that Cooper cratered on solid ground very close to where the money was found. I have been saying the above since visiting that area in November 2009. Robert99

Jo or SIMPLE SIMON, whatever screen name you are using now, both you and Blevins need to read the transcripts of the radio communications between the crew and air traffic control people while the airliner was on the ground in Seattle. While those communications may not support your pet theories, they show that the air traffic control people did set up a volume of protected air space around the airliner when it was airborne. When the airliner passed through the Portland area, the flight crew said that they were at 10,000 feet and above an overcast plus two or three additional cloud layers. So it would be difficult for anyone who didn't have x-ray eyes to even see the airliner from the ground. And to repeat, the airliner was above the clouds at 10,000 feet and not below the clouds at the much lower altitude claimed by the people you consider credible. There was no need for the airliner to fly 20 miles out of its way to pass over a less populated area east of Portland when it could do the same thing west of Portland and also shorten its flight path at the same time. I am not aware of a single thing that you or Blevins have done that gives any support at all to either of your Cooper candidates. While I have suspected Georger's affiliations for a while, I do not work for the FBI, CIA, Sesame Street, or any crime busting organization. Robert99

The guy doesn't name an LZ in his post, and if you actually know where Cooper jumped...you should sent that info to the Seattle FBI. But you don't know. Not for sure. Neither does the FBI or anyone else. Personally, I think he jumped not long after he saw the lights go by at the Merwin Lake Dam. That's just a guess, of course. I've always believed at least a modicum of planning went into the whole thing, since you are talking about risking your life by jumping from that jet, getting forty years in prison if you're caught, or shot by snipers at SeaTac...and then expecting the FBI to provide the means to escape, as well as the money. Unless Cooper was a complete nut job, he probably studied a map and did some planning first. He was cool enough to order a drink and have a smoke with The Main Stew first. He also knew exactly how to direct the crew to do what he wanted. What do you think? Sound like spur of the moment to you? Blevins, To answer all of your questions in one shot, you need to start reading the thread. Robert99

Jo, If this fellow wants to check an area that you are interested in, it must be on the east side of Portland. And nowhere close to where Cooper jumped. So there is no point in getting excited about this. Robert99

How do you know this data was erased? Are U saying all we have are the transcripts? WHY? This is negligence from the GET GO if they where actually erased! Who would erase them and HOW long does the Black Box record and how often does it reset? Excuse my layman terms - but, I am just that DUMB old woman who makes not sense sometimes! Some of what U guys discuss GOES right over the COO's nest so I try NOT to get involved in these conversations - I DO read them! Jo, The discussion about the Seattle Air Traffic Control transcripts being "sanitized" has been going on here for about four years. On the matter of the Flight Data Recorder information being erased, it should be remembered that this was on a continuous tape loop that recorded over the old data after a specified period of time. I don't know exactly what the time was in 1971, since the recorder's capability started out quit low and was improved over the years, but it probably wasn't more than about an hour then. It was more than 2 and one-half hours from the time that Cooper supposedly jumped until the airliner landed in Reno. If a member of the cockpit crew didn't pull the circuit breaker and stop the recording within a relatively short period of time after Cooper jumped, then the information recorded when Cooper was on board would be recorded over and lost. Robert99

The "front and back chute" remark is a funny way to ask for parachutes and indicates that Cooper was not a paratrooper to begin with. Also, Army paratroopers would not normally come in contact with the Navy NB-6/8 parachutes. Robert99

Correct. Since the Cooper landing zone estimate was supposedly prepared from flight data recorder information, among other things, someone would have had to be certain enough that Cooper had jumped to pull the circuit breaker for the FDR in order to preserve the record. Robert99 Would be interesting to know when thatwas done. It's not in the Transcript. Georger, You have just stated the whole problem here. Most of the important things have been deleted from the transcripts by parties known or unknown and they are certainly not going to "fess up" at this late date. Robert99

Shutter, I believe that the bathroom was on the right side of the fuselage and just behind the seat row that Cooper occupied. Also, I understand that the interphone and meal preparation area was on the left side of the fuselage in the area where those wires are. I do not know the purpose of the wires but they were probably used only in the FBI tests. Robert99

Correct. Since the Cooper landing zone estimate was supposedly prepared from flight data recorder information, among other things, someone would have had to be certain enough that Cooper had jumped to pull the circuit breaker for the FDR in order to preserve the record. Robert99

Well, I'm glad you agree with me. It would be kind of a shock for me to find out I'd taught people how to fly and was wrong about that. ;) Planes don't have to pitch up to gain altitude, especially the maybe 50 or so feet per minute being indicated there. I'm not going to get into the whole "pitch controls the airspeed and thrust controls climb" thing, but yeah, it does. Beyond that, it's entirely possible the pilot is anticipating for what would almost certainly be a pitch down as the stairs lower more with more weight on them. In any case, I wouldn't attach too much significance to the exact moment the photo was taken. It's entirely possible the stairs flopping around is causing the instruments to fluctuate as well. Lastly, I doubt your simulator does much in the way of simulating the aerodynamics of the stairs in flight. The 305 727 had a socalled Black Box. I assume that box has a clock. How detailed is the data collected by that black box in terms of pitch, roll, altitude events, pressure events ... so that one could reconstruct a running record that is in real time ? A record of 305's flight parms during the 8:00-8:20 period ? Those black box times are accurate (both the flight data and the cockpit voice recorders). And so are the times in the Air Traffic Control transcripts. The information from these sources is correlated during accident/incident investigations to reconstruct the sequence of events. Robert99

Thank you Humongous. I see that thingy now. It is in fact the hand rail. Same handrail both sides of the stairwell. They have mounted their instrument thingy to the handrail thingy, however there is as yet a wire and what may be a fastener thingy still unexplained. I wonder if these instruments are self contained or if one or two need electrical power? I am sure you know all about it! The clock was probably spring powered but could have been electrical although it probably wasn't. Neither the VSI or the altimeter would be electrical. All three would need electrical connections for lighting during night flights. Basically, the answer to your question is that no electrical power would be needed for reading during the daytime, other things being equal. Robert99

Congratulations on your military service. By a weird coincidence, I was in the military during the same time period that you specify. My $3960 in G.I. Bill educational benefits apparently didn't go as far as yours did. In fact, since my total undergraduate and graduate expenses exceeded $100,000 in that time period, the G.I. Bill money paid less than four percent of those expenses. Perhaps that was partly due to my being interested in very specialized programs and mainly attended private and expensive colleges that provided those programs. But I ended up with three college degrees in my closet and have no complaints. Would you classify law enforcement officers in the same manner as you classify Marines? Robert99

Clock VSI - tells how fast you're climbing or descending Airspeed Least, that's the way I see them. the center gauge could be a VSI, but they look a little different from what is shown. the one on the plane looks like this (see photo) altitude I could see the FBI wanting, not sure about a VSI??? you would think at least one would be for pressure. if the center one is a VSI the plane is not level. the needle appears to be off from the 9 o'clock position? would a VSI work in the reverse position????? Shutter, Remember that the TCAS was a long way in the future in 1971. What do you mean by the VSI working in the reverse position? Robert99

Clock VSI - tells how fast you're climbing or descending Airspeed Least, that's the way I see them. I think I have seen two needle Airspeed Indicators but that was eons ago. However, I don't think this is one. Following WW2, things started to get standardized by the human factors people and the two needle airspeed indicators faded away. Maybe they are just using an altimeter as a pressure gage to save a few bucks. The three instruments on that panel should not cost more than about $200 in 1971 dollars in either new or freshly overhauled condition. Robert99

They were probably obtained from an instrument shop specifically for these tests. They are probably just standard instruments for the 1971 time frame. Robert99